Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday February 22, 2012 @03:25PM
from the jittery-breathing dept.

First time accepted submitter RenderSeven writes "Manufacturing.net reports that U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials plan to investigate whether inhalable caffeine sold in lipstick-sized canisters is safe for consumers and if its manufacturer was right to brand it as a dietary supplement. AeroShot went on the market late last month in Massachusetts and New York, and it's also available in France. Consumers put one end of the canister in their mouths and breathe in, releasing a fine powder that dissolves almost instantly."

All chemicals destined for the lab have insane warning labels. Buy some cleaned sand from a chemical supply company (used for filtration). It's off a beach somewhere but you'd think it was a bottle of plague-infested death shards. They just slap the same FUD warning label on everything just because it's going in a lab. You never know when something is contaminated by the reagent next to it on the shelf but it's still pretty over-the-top.

What's to keep your average marker-sniffing high school student from cracking these open and going to town (and then to the hospital)?

A fatal dose would cost about "three hundred" or so dollars and ripping all the canisters apart would take hours, I suppose. And probably more mechanical skill that your average stimulant addict.

Probably a "easier" way to poison someone, since foul play is expected if they find your blood full of rat poison, but if there's so much caffeine in your blood that its crystallized (slight exaggeration) then they'll just shrug their shoulders and say "I saw this on Oprah; kids these days; too bad"

Caffeine pills. nodoz and friends. I used them to wean myself off caffeinated energy drinks without a headache. Its been awhile but I used a spreadsheet and I distinctly remember how much of a PITA it was to chop nodoz smaller than 1/4 size so I went for 1/2 pill intervals. I recall the process took a couple days.

Yeah, well that's what their marketing stuff says, but that's just their end-run around the FDA. When used as directed: i.e. puffed into the mouth and swallowed, it can pass as a dietary supplement. But it's pretty clear that the fastest hit will come from inhaling and everybody knows it. The French manufacturer is named "Breathable Foods" for god's sake. Pretty transparent

In amounts [of caffeine] the equivalent of say, snorting a line of cocaine, you would cause *serious damage.

Citation please.

In my misspent youth circa the early 80s, there were commonly available "fake speed" caffeine pills circulating...made to look like real 'pink hearts' or 'black beauties'..which were sold legally and prominently advertised in High Times. And kids would bust them open and snort them, something I tried exactly once. It burned like hell, but nobody died, went to the hospital, or even got particularly high from them.

And just to look at numbers...the typical cup of coffee has 100mg of caffeine, a can of Jolt has 280mg. So 4 cans of Jolt is more damaging than ingesting a entire gram of pure cocaine? I don't see it.

Not that I'm saying approving this is a good idea, even as someone pretty heartily opposed to drug prohibition in all its forms. But I don't think the proposition that pure caffeine is more dangerous than cocaine stands up to the facts.